Sausage Party -Review

Just when you thought Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg couldn’t possibly get any raunchier, they brought us Sausage Party. I can never look at food the same way again.

Sausage Party is about food that lives in a supermarket, waiting and hoping for the day their Gods (humans) will take them to “The Great Beyond” where they’ll be finally able to shed their packaging. Turns out the truth isn’t as lovely as they once thought.

For a movie that on the surface seems like it’s only about horny food, Sausage Party was surprisingly deep. It analysed our relationship with religion, what it’s like to coexist with people who have different belief systems as well as what happens when your beliefs are shattered. It tackled some political aspects by playing with stereotypes while acknowledging the humour and issues with them. Some interesting and relevant points were made while staying within the expected dirty humour, especially with the characterization of different food. There’s a douche (the feminine hygiene product) that is a douche, a fat bag of chips, juice boxes are Jews, there is a Mexican lesbian taco, Fire Water is a Native American etc. All the characters were set up in funny and clever ways with voice characters that matched really well to the characters. Each character was brought to life with the uniqueness of every voice actor. Especially when most of the cast are high profile actors it’s a lot of fun to see and understand why each person was chosen for the specific role.

I’ve seen criticism calling the film politically incorrect and/or racist which is nonsense. The film never fully delves deeply into any issues and there is room to potentially make a bigger statement, but is a big statement really needed? No. It’s a raunchy and vulgar film about talking food, you can only get so deep with a concept like that. What they did tackle was done in a way that was smart, calculated, and worked for what the film is.
Sure, it pushes some boundaries in terms of offensiveness, but in a satirical nature causing it to come across as more of a commentary opposed to trying to be highly offensive.

Although due to the film being more on the satirical end, the humour isn’t as consistent and hilarious as some of the previous films done by the same group of people. The comedy is where the film falls flat the most. The jokes got a little bit redundant at points and I wish they moved beyond relying on how funny it is to see food swear and want to have sex. I get it, the sausage wants to be in the bun. I also understand the euphemism but after the tenth time, it still isn’t funny. I thought I’d be crying of laughter the entire time and it seems to me this is due to the way the trailers portrayed this film. It set up certain expectations, another Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg branded comedy with all your favourite comedians, only to hit you with something a little more clever than plain sex jokes. That isn’t a bad thing, but I went in expecting something I wasn’t quite given and that’s where the disappointment set in.

I’m still waiting for Rogen and Goldberg to come out with something that matches or even tops This is the End. I may be waiting forever.